This document summarizes how SharePoint can help legal services organizations meet their information management goals of better findability, reducing reinvention of content, and improving information sharing. It outlines how SharePoint allows for universal search across multiple sources, managed metadata for improved navigation and filtering of search results, content types and templates for reuse of content, and easy sharing of content through profiles and activity feeds. While SharePoint could provide these benefits either in the cloud or on-premises, the document also notes some challenges to implementation, such as an initial steep learning curve and lack of predefined templates for legal organizations.

1. SharePoint 2010 for Legal
Services

2. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Information Management Goals
• Better findability
• Less reinventing the wheel
• Better information sharing
• Flexible searching and browsing
Image Credit:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/punkjr/2438172247/in/photostream/
via CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

3. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
SharePoint Overview
Advocate Goal How SharePoint Helps
Find things easily • Good, filterable results
• Universal search (includes network
drives, SharePoint, and Outlook)
• Managed metadata to avoid noise
Avoid reinventing the wheel whenever • Content types = templates
possible • Granular management of boilerplate
snippets
• Easily point others to your own most
frequently-requested docs
Share information with little effort • Colligo allows upload to SharePoint
from within Outlook
• Existing network drives sync with
SharePoint document libraries
• Profiles / social networking

4. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Managed Metadata
• Get more powerful
navigation (left)
• Prevent clutter/noise
in metadata by using
approved terms (right)
• …but note: you can
still provide a place to
Tagging suggestions accept user-generated
tags for later inclusion
in the taxonomy
Faceted browsing

5. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Search Result Filters
Early tests on the
search results
seem good. We’ll
SharePoint see what happens
automatically at scale.
provides filters,
which can be
customized if
needed.

6. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Search Everywhere at Once
Exchange Network SharePoint
Public Drives Document
Folders Libraries
One search

7. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Content Types
• As granular or as general as you choose
• Both unique attributes and common ones
• Associate each content type with a specific
Word template, then fill in data automatically
for each case using Business Connectivity
Services and your Case Management System*
*Long-term goal!! Additional assembly required

8. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Granular Management of Boilerplate
• Always pasting that one RLTA
citation into every letter?
Store and manage it in a
central location
• Quickly share boilerplate
snippets with others
• Use these snippets from
within your Word document
without switching to
SharePoint

9. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Share Your Commonly-Requested Docs
• Are you famous for your frequently-updated and indespensible
Housing brief? Give it a special home.
• Others can find it without asking, with assurance that it is the latest
version

10. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Colligo
• Lawyers love Outlook, so make it easy to
publish information to SharePoint from there
• There will be additional costs for this, though
http://www.colligo.com/products/sharepoint/co
lligo-contributor-add-in-for-outlook/

11. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Easy Network Drive Integration
Identical
Have the benefit of SharePoint searching and
browsing without giving up the file structure
experience people are used to (at least at first)

12. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Better Information Sharing: Profile
• Ask Me About lets people know
what kinds of cases you are
knowledgeable about
• Recent Activities shows people
your recently-shared docs
• Highly customizable; don’t get
carried away

13. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Cloud vs. Local
SharePoint Online in Office 365 (Cloud) SharePoint Server 2010 (Local)
Currently, no possibility of sharing data Can connect with your CMS through
with your case management software* Business Connectivity Services
Can’t bring case data into Word and other Can import case data into Word
Office products*
Fewer resources required Need at least 1 local server
Accessible equally from all offices Branch offices must use VPN
Limited bells and whistles related to Full search: tunable relevance, deep
search refinement, federated results, “Did You
Mean?”, query suggestions, related
queries
In most other important respects they are the same
Full feature-by-feature comparison on page 35 of the official SharePoint Online Services Description at
http://bit.ly/rQFUcy
*As of Nov 2011, Microsoft began adding this functionality to the online version. Currently only supports (surprise)
Microsoft Azure external systems

14. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Challenges
• It’s not intuitive. Period. Full stop.
– Building a SharePoint site means learning Microsoft-
ese vocab words: sites, libraries, columns, farms, etc
– Learning curve is fairly steep
• No common template yet exists for legal services
orgs
• Choice can be crippling
– You can do almost anything you can think of, therefor
you have to work extra hard to define goals and
constraints

15. Intro | Findability | Reuse | Sharing | Cloud v Local | Challenges | Conclusion
Thanks!
• Questions?